This project sets out to demonstrate that media coverage can degrade a country's image by using selective news without context. It uses the Netherlands as an example. It is a reaction to the frequent misrepresentations of Israel in many ways in major media, including those of the Netherlands.

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

The Norwegian company Odfjell has
under heavy pressure decided to entirely close for the moment its tank farm in
the Rotterdam region. The company’s director Laurence Odfjell has admitted that
the facilities do not meet environmental and safety standards. It will have to
replace all cooling and extinguishing facilities on its more than 140 tanks
with new ones. The company has apologized for its failures and hopes that the
safety shutdown and restoration plans will remove the protests in society
regarding its activities. The Dutch Environmental and Safety authorities consider
the safety shutdown the correct response in view of the situation at Odfjell.

Monday, July 30, 2012

Of the 600 leading criminals in
Amsterdam, half already behaved highly problematically before they reached the
age of 12. They often have friends who are also criminals, or members of their
families who have police records. About half of all these criminals are
psychiatrically disturbed, or have minor intellectual limitations. The
municipal health service (GDD) considers that the only way to keep these people
straight is lengthy personal care by the authorities, not only for the
youngsters, but also for their environment.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

In many hospitals in the Netherlands,
expensive equipment is used unnecessarily. This was stated by Anton
Westerlaken, Chairman of the Board of the Maasstad Hospital in Rotterdam. He
gave as one example that in Dutch hospitals, 44 PET scans are installed, while
only 9 are needed. Each of these costs 3 million Euro. This means that the
waste in this field alone is about 100 million Euro. Westerlaken claims that
this derives from the competition in the Dutch hospitals.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

The various inspectorate
services of the government should operate far more independently and
professionally. Their critical attitudes have declined. This is the result of
the fact that the inspectorates consider the businesses and institutions they
inspect as clients who should be served. There is now a generation of
inspectors in the Netherlands which is no longer trained properly. This was
said by Ben Ale, Professor of Security at the Technical University in Delft. He
mentioned that in the Rotterdam tank storage firm Odfjell, the storage tanks
have not been inspected for more than 30 years. This also means that the
relevant environmental body hasn’t undertaken any action there.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

About 11,000 people are being treated
by institutions for therapy of cannabis addiction. Four out of ten are younger
than 25 years old. In 2000, the number of people treated was 3,000. In 2009,
about 150,000 people in the Netherlands use cannabis daily. These are the
findings of the new National Drug Monitor.

Monday, July 23, 2012

Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders has written an open letter to Swedish EU Commissioner Cecilia Malmström. He said that her behavior may make Dutchmen view Sweden less positively than has been the case in the past. He accused her of wanting EU domination, where others wanted freedom. Wilders wrote: “No Dutchman has voted for you. We don’t know who you are. We don’t know you, but you force your ideas on our people.” He called on Malmström not to confuse multi-cultural ideas with the reality. Wilders mentioned that mass immigration meant for the Netherlands more criminality, more dependence on social payments, hindrance, alienation and education problems. He advised her to come and live in a Dutch Islamized neighborhood and asked her whether he could help her find an apartment there. He called on Malmström to resign.www.pvv.nl/index.php/component/content/article/36-geert-wilders/6056-brief-wilders-aan-malmstrom.html

Sunday, July 22, 2012

The owner of a tea house in Leiden has been fined 5,000 Euro because he put up two sun umbrellas to protect his customers from raven excrement. He had no building permission for putting up the shades on wheels and the municipality claims that such permission is required. The man paid the fine in order to remain on good terms with the municipality. He will now have to chase the ravens away with rattles.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

The four leading Dutch pension funds
have announced that they will decrease pension payouts in 2013 due to the fall
in interest rates. The last one to announce this is the one of workers in the
care sector (PFZW). It will also increase the premium for the pensions for
those who are currently still working. There is a threat that in 2014, further
cuts will be necessary by the four leading funds. The problems that the major
funds incur indicate that additional pension funds will face difficulties.www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/2680/Economie/article/detail/3288521/2012/07/19/Pensioenen-in-zorg-gaan-omlaag.dhtml

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Personnel of the Dutch
Arkefly airline is being pressured by criminals on the island of Curaçao to
smuggle cocaine to the Netherlands on the company’s flights there. This was
said by Arkefly’s director Steven van der Heijden. A few weeks ago an employee
of the company was arrested with a large quantity of cocaine in her luggage.

Monday, July 16, 2012

Labor Party counselors in the town of Hoek van Holland said that bad weather forecasts are spoiling the tourist trade. They therefore want the weather forecasters to pay fines if their forecasts are wrong. A hotel owner in the town said that “recent weather reporting has been completely inaccurate and it is hitting local businesses dearly because people are cancelling bookings. I agree they should be fined on the grounds of disseminating incorrect information.”

Thursday, July 12, 2012

In 2011, almost 66,000 cases of child abuse were reported to the AMK
Monitoring office. On the basis of this, 19,254 investigations were carried
out. Both the number of abuses reported and the investigations increased by 6%
over previous years. In 8 out of 10 cases, the investigations carried out
showed that there was indeed child abuse discovered. This was reported in the
annual report of the youth care organization Jeugdzorg Nederland. The
organization states that the increase could also be due to better reporting.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

The first pictures ever of
executions by the Dutch in Indonesia, then the Dutch Indies, in the first years
after the Second World War have been published more than 60 years later.
Experts of the Dutch Institute for War Documentation and the Dutch Institute
for Military History state that they have never seen such pictures. Three
Indonesians are seen with their backs to the people who fired at them. Next to
them is a trench full of people who were executed. Historians have no doubt
about the veracity of the pictures.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

In the three southern provinces of
the Netherlands, an identity card was introduced on 1 May which permits people
to buy in so-called “coffee shops” which sell soft drugs. Research by Nicole
Maalste and Rutger Jan Hebben on behalf of the Epicurus Foundation have shown
that as a result, illegal street sales of soft drugs have greatly increased and
a major and uncontrollable networks has been created of street dealers who can
be called for supplies. The price of soft drugs on the street is at least 25%
lower than in coffee shops. In particular, those in the age group of 18-24 and
non-Western immigrants buy in the street. There is a risk that the illegal
dealers also sell other drugs so that youngsters come into contact with hard
drugs. The police have insufficient capacity to deal with the problem. The
identity card will also be introduced into the remainder of the Netherlands in
2013.www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/2686/Binnenland/article/detail/3283370/2012/07/07/Onderzoekers-Wietpas-schiet-zijn-doel-voorbij.dhtml

Monday, July 9, 2012

There are about 4,000
professional shop thieves in the Netherlands, almost 20% of them comes from
Eastern Europe. Poles, Bulgarians, Romanians and Lithuanians don’t see it as a
problem if they end up in a Dutch jail because they consider their stay in the
prison as a “rest period.” These foreigners cause damages of 120 million Euro a
year – about a third of the entire damage caused by shoplifting in the
Netherlands. These data result from a report by the National Police Service
(KLPD.)

Sunday, July 8, 2012

One in eight inhabitants
of Amsterdam is slightly retarded. This means that they have an IQ of
between 70 and 85. These results are from an inquiry ordered by
Amsterdam Mayor Eberhard Van der Laan (Labor) Nabt . The mayor is
afraid that changes in government policy will mean that in
particular, slightly retarded youngsters will have to be dealt with
by regular youth care rather than by specialized services.

Thursday, July 5, 2012

After the United States, the
Netherlands is the major base in the world for cyber criminality. About 15% of malicious
software originates in the country. One important reason that so many
distributers of viruses operate from the Netherlands is because of its very
good internet structure. According to the leading research organization TNO,
the cost of cyber criminality to Dutch society is at least 10 billion Euro. One
out of three Dutch internet users has been a victim of a virus attack in the
last half year. This results from data of Kaspersky, an authority in the field
of cyber crime.

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

None of the 25 Dutch police corps respects the rules of privacy of civilians. This
was published by the digital civil rights movement, Bits of Freedom. It came to
this conclusion on the basis of internal police reports. This breaking of the law
on police data (Wet Politiegegevens) concerns both suspects and people who
submit complaints. The norms laid down by law are also transgressed on a large
scale by the Dutch military police.

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

In the town of Oude Pekela, two
stumbling stones in memory of Jews who were murdered in Auschwitz were stolen. These
stones are being placed in many countries in front of buildings where Holocaust
victims lived. According to Andries Brans of the Committee for Stolpersteine
Pekela, the inventor of the stones the German artist Gunther Demnig, more than
30,000 stones have been placed so far and none have been stolen in the past.
Replacement stones will be brought in.

Monday, July 2, 2012

Professor Dirk Smeesters who taught Consumer
Behavior and Society at Erasmus University in Rotterdam has resigned. In his
articles, which have been withdrawn, are findings which seem highly improbable
statistically. The data on which his research was based were no longer
available when asked for. According to the university, Smeesters himself has
admitted that “he has selected the data in a way that the results he wanted
became statistically significant.” In November 2011, the fraud by another
professor at the same university, Don Poldermans became known. In September it
became known that Diederik Stapel of the University of Tilburg had greatly
cheated on results of research.

Sunday, July 1, 2012

A record number of bankruptcies are
expected this year in the Netherlands. In the past half year, almost as many
businesses went bankrupt as in the same period in 2009 – the worst year so far.
This was reported by the TV station NOS. Marcel Theunis, a specialist in the
field, said that initially mainly small businesses and start-ups went bankrupt.
Nowadays, many more businesses which have been around for a number of years are
collapsing.

Welcome to the Bad News from The Netherlands blog!

News coverage from Israel is often distorted if measured against the 'Code of Ethics' guidelines of journalism. The origins of “bad news” about a country thus lie with numerous foreign media. This project exposes one of many methods used.

“Bad News from the Netherlands” has raised major international interest since it appeared on the web in October 2007. Many thanks are due to all those who have contributed news, ideas and financing. Support us to expand this project.

Act against the biased media: start a “bad news” blog about another country. If you want to use this layout, please contact us at the e-mail address below.

Do It Yourself

The "Bad News Movement" is not a franchise, but consists ofindependent initiatives of which Bad News from the Netherlands is the first. Yet as the initiator of the movement, we would like to make a few suggestions to those who want to establish similar projects:

1. Always keep in mind the target of the blog: showing only negative items about a country makes its society aware of how some of their media distort the image of Israel.2. Focus on items from leading sources such as the government, major media, well-known institutions.3. Do not concentrate on one or a few areas. Deal with as many major aspects of the country as possible: government, politics, justice, media, culture, civil society, etc.4. Do not exaggerate issues beyond what is mentioned. A collection of bad news is bad enough without blowing up the facts. Let the facts speak for themselves.5. While one can draw part of the information from the more sensational papers, let them not dominate the blog.6. Do not emphasize ethnicity of people where it is irrelevant to the issue.7. When necessary, provide comments on issues which require it, but try to present the majority of issues without comment.